Phew! Busy playing catch-up which has meant a few late evenings and meetings. October looks like being a mega busy month with a Big Draw and the Open Studios. I’ve never been involved in the Big Draw but this one, a well established event in Southwell Minster takes place on 17th Oct this year – and I’m both nervous and excited about it. I am responsible for connecting with 4 local primary schools and we are aiming to project work made prior to the day onto a screen. Through newsletters we are hoping to encourage parents and grand parents to come on the day. (A creative way of accessing a massive audience). The ADOs at Newark and Sherwood have been fantastic. James Parkinson has arranged for flyers and posters to be printed and distributed to libraries, library vans and some other public places. (Some spares for us too). Oh… and £50 for materials. Me and Heather are creating a giant Noah’s Ark with scope for creatures of land, sea and sky. I have suggested in fancy dress and masks in the newsletter – which will provide inspiration for the drawing as well as creating a colourful spectacle. A tower of Babel, maps and portraits are just some of the projects organised. Brilliant!
I am not cut out for this! We had some amazing applications for the HMS Exhibition Space to show during the open studios event in October. We are an unfunded organisation so targeting artists had to be done on a budget. We achieved this through listings on AN, Axis and Artquest. Thank you! Result! What has taken me an age is writing to artists who weren’t successful. I feel their pain.
After a run of incidents, issues and bad luck Iwas hoping to post some more positive thoughts on the blog. Bad stuff happens but a break would be good. Running the studios has been a virtual process of late, but thank goodness for emails and the web. A pain in my side 2 weeks ago turned out to be a twisted ovary with a dermiod cyst, the size of an orange attached. (Google the horror and see what monsters they are – hair and teeth etc ugh) An emergency operation to remove the alien has left me sore and a bit infected. I missed Steffie Richard’s PV and only managed a peak when I went to the studios for a glimpse of the work last week. Great work and Steffie is working hard to promote it. We really need to look at raising the profiel of the space and funding for marketing.
Crunch! We have just been notified that the HMS Erewash residency funding has been pulled for the 2009 Derby graduates. You always know when there has "been a long discussion" and it was "a hard decision", that the news is not good.
Instead money is being diverted to nurture another creative industry -which I think is great. As we have a healthy waiting list and we never budgeted for public funding, HMS will be fine.
However, we will miss the energy and freshness of the Derby graduates. I have already been approached by students this year and so it's a shame this unique opportunity is going.
We are talking to ex-Loughborough students about some joint ventures and discussion groups… so there aare other ways of connecting with graduates.
Now we are two! Just getting our head round the Open Studios in October. Funnily enough, now we don't receive the bursary from the council we can apply for funding for marketing – what's that saying about a silver lining?
I wish I could go to all my previews. I currently have drawings in an exhibition in Paju Book, Seoul, Korea.
